Fantastic Religious Weirdness

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"...after the blessing we talked for a while about how to work with some of the laws that are hard to keep if you're not human. Like I can't totally shut off my power on Shabbas y'know? He says my case ain't too bad, he knows this oyster kibbutz up the coast and them bastards got problems."

The tenets of a real-world religion can interact... oddly with fantasy or futuristic settings.

In the simplest form of this trope, the setting makes religiously forbidden things harder to avoid, or mandatory things harder to do. Maybe it's impossible for Jewish vampires to keep kosher without starving.note This is probably true unless they can live on fish blood, which is permitted according to the Talmud.note Pikuach nefesh refers to a concept in Jewish religious law where certain prohibited behaviors are permissible if they preserve a life. Ergo, a vampire would be allowed to consume non-kosher blood because it was required for their survival, so long and no one was murdered to get the blood A group of Muslims on a Generation Ship is likely to have trouble making a pilgrimage to Mecca.note While Muslims are only required to make a pilgrimage to Mecca if they are capable of doing so, don't expect this distinction to be brought up in fiction because that takes away the drama. (It's also possible in principle for a setting to make religion easier,note For instance, a planet with an orbital period of 354.37 Earth days, were it to exist, would synchronize with the Islamic lunar calendar, potentially making fasting Ramadan much easier—particularly if it falls in local winter in the planet's habitable regions. but that's less likely to happen as it fails to follow the Rule of Drama.)

There can also be interactions between religion and fantasy that are more complex. The discovery of fantastic elements can lead to crises of faith (or it may not for no apparent reason), or conversely make the elements of that faith more relevant. note If you find that you've become a vampire werewolf, make friends with a rabbi immediately. And that's not even getting into the situations where the approach to the religion is partof what makes the setting fantastical...

Done well, this can enrich both characters and setting. Done poorly, it makes one wonder if the creators actually know anything about the religion they're trying to portray.

This can be Truth in Television. Conferences of real Muslims have grappled with the question of how to pray toward Mecca five times a day while orbiting the earth every 90 minutes. And just how do you determine when Shabbas begins and ends in places that experience polar night and midnight sun or, for that matter, can the faithful be expected to fast from sun up to sun down in such locationsnote Muslims in polar communities have the choice of keeping to the local schedule or following the sunrise and sunset times of Mecca during Ramadan? Do particular transgenic foods meet Islam's dietary laws? And now that lab-grown meat is just over the horizon, would a beef burger grown in a petri dish be kosher (which demands meat be slaughtered a particular way)? Or acceptable to Hindus (who don't eat beef)? Or Jains (who regard slaughtering animals as violence)?

Interestingly, in post-communist Poland, exploration of this sort of thing has developed into a real SF genre, called clerical fiction.

Examples:

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Comics

In an issue of the DC Comics mini-series Infinite Crisis, all the Christian heroes hold Mass in a church. Naturally the Celebrant is the exiled angel Zauriel. One person queries why Blue Devil stands there in flames. Well, he's a good Catholic boy. He's also a Devil standing on sacred ground.

The graphic novel Creature Tech has its skeptical scientist end up on an alien world at one point... only to find an alien Jesus being crucified. Naturally, if Jesus were real and divine, there's no way he would've died to save just one species.

In the Marvel Universe, vampires are vulnerable to the symbols of all faiths — so long as the bearer of the symbol's faith is strong. Dracula himself was once burned by a faithful Orthodox Jew's Star of David medallion. note It was Kitty Pryde's. Kitty first tried to subdue him with a cross, but it didn't work for her. Wolverine, (apparently an atheist at the time, or at the very least not a believing Christian) also tried to make a cross with his claws as was similarly laughed off by Dracula. It only worked for Nightcrawler, since he is a practicing Christian. Another time, a vampire mook was instakilled by The Mighty Thor's hammer. (He's a god, remember?)

In one issue of The Mighty Thor, Thor saves the life of a Christian priest, and assures him that although he (Thor) is real, so is a god superior to Thor whom the Thunder God explicitly identifies as the Christian God. (It's never made clear which sect the priest is, nor is the question of Jesus addressed.)

In the alternate universe of Marvel 1602, it's even weirder: Thor's human incarnation Donal is a member The Knights Templar, and has to deal with the fact that his own existence contradicts his faith.

As of the latest update, they're apparently still trying to figure out how to answer that. At any rate, the official line is that yes, AIsdo have souls. And at least one AI has chosen to become a rabbi.

In "Solaere ssiun Hnaifv'daenn", when Commander Jaleh Khoroushi, an Iranian-born Shi'a Muslim, does her five daily prayers, she asks the ship's computer to point her at the Sol system. Also, following various Real Life fatwas, she requests an injected vaccine rather than an oral one to avoid breaking her Ramadan fast. The author's notes also theorize that, food replicators being a relatively recent invention (they weren't around in TOS), there still might be debate over whether replicated food is halalnote To wit, while meat animals are required to be hand-slaughtered with the name of Allah pronounced over them, does that still hold true if it was never actually an animal to begin with?, although Jaleh's already been established as willing to ignore Islamic dietary rules on deployment out of practicality. The later story "Mhirrafv Terrhai" also says that Jaleh times her daily prayers and Ramadan fast by ship time (she's briefly confused when she goes home to visit family and the local cleric sings the call to prayer at what is for her the "wrong" time).

The Wrong Reflection: USS Bajor carries a Bajoran chapel and a chaplain (a Bajoran monk contracted with Starfleet) due to the crew's unusually high percentage of Bajorans. Most Starfleet ships have neither, whereas another story has a brief mention of the Bajoran Militia having traditional uniformed chaplains.

Various other stories mention new denominations such as Reform Baptist, and paganism has apparently made enough of a resurgence for a recurring character's mother to have been raised Norse.

Film

Trying to accommodate Santa-focused Christmas stories to the more Christian version of the holiday can lead to strangeness. For example, The Polar Express seemed to portray Santa as Jesus.

The Dracula-parody film Love at First Bite has a scene where a Magen David proves to have no effect on Dracula. Amusingly, the guy wielding the Magen David only has it because he's a psychiatrist who adapted a Jewish name "for professional reasons."

In the French comedy Dracula and Son (Dracula père et fils) a crossed hammer and sickle deters vampires just as well as a crucifix. But the former are easier to find in socialist Romania.

Filipino horror and fantasy movies tend to reflect the local manifestations of Catholicism, including Christianized animism. The Killing of Satan on the other hand runs away with Red Tuxedo Satan and his gang of flamboyant sorcerers.

In The Mummy (1999), Beni, when confronted by the newly resurrected Imhotep, pulls out a lot of holy symbols that he apparently wears on a chain around his neck — on the eminently practical grounds that one of them has to work — displaying each and saying a prayer in the appropriate language to try to ward him off. Only the Star of David and a Jewish prayer averts Beni's imminent demise — but only because Imhotep recognizes Hebrew as "the language of the slaves" and thinks Beni will be useful in this regard.

Interestingly, Islam of the "Riddickverse" seems to have adapted fairly well to interstellar colonization. Hajj is made to the planet New Mecca, and when pilgrims pray, they face straight up, toward the stars.

Fool's War by Sarah Zettel is a Space Opera where most of the main characters are Muslim. This leads to them asking each other questions like "Which way is Mecca today?" whenever they're on their spaceship and need to pray.

Charles Stross deals with future changes to Muslim practices in Accelerando. One of the protagonists emancipates herself at the age of twelve via a complicated scheme that involves the relationship between shari'a and modern corporate law—she essentially sells herself into slavery to a computer-run company operated by a blind trust of which she is the sole owner. Her mother attempts to regain guardianship over her, in part by converting to Islam.

In Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear, fae who existed before the coming of Christ are not bound by Christian tradition, while those born afterwards are (and thus, for example, reflexively flinch whenever the name of God is spoken).

Almost the entire Kitty Norville series is about the mundane consequences of vampirism and lycanthropy, so this naturally comes up at least a bit. One particularly memorable scene in Kitty and the Midnight Hour has a vampire calling into a talk show for religious advice; apparently devout Catholicism and bursting into flame upon entering holy ground make a bad combination. Kitty's advice to him is to read Paradise Lost: she argues that Satan's real sin in that book wasn't the rebellion itself, but afterward, when he came to believe that his rebellion put him beyond forgiveness forever. Likewise, supposedly, being a vampire might make existence especially inconvenient for a Catholic, but it doesn't have to mean damnation unless he gives up. Heartwarming.

One scene features a priest discussing whether the (intelligent) dragons possess original sin. He comes to the conclusion that since they're not mentioned in the Bible as eating from the Tree, they do not. They're also unrelated to the serpent who tempted Eve, because while the serpent was cursed to crawl along the ground, dragons mostly get around by flying through the air.

When the group travels through the Middle East in Black Powder War they see both people and dragons praying towards Mecca.

A Buddhist dragon also gets a mention, though her religion is implied rather than stated outright.

The souls of the dead come back to possess people. It's a normal part of life (well...death) that any advanced culture has to deal with to grow. One of the first people to be possessed is exorcised by a priest, thus leading you to think it's the usual demonic possession thing, except it turns out it only worked because the possessor was Catholic. It doesn't work if the soul doesn't believe in it.

The main villain is possessed, but is so evil he in fact steals the abilities of the non-evil possessor while keeping it imprisoned in his mind. He goes on a campaign of galactic destruction thinking he is doing the bidding of the Lightbringer (Satan).

In the CoDominium series, every Imam has also become an amateur astronomer, since they have to locate Sol to find Mecca to pray toward. This is a nod to real history, as it's speculated that the difficulty of finding Mecca was a major factor in the Muslim world's innovations in astronomy, mathematics, etc.

The Fremen in Dune are the descendants of Muslims who were relocated, apparently forcibly, to alien planets. Ten thousand years later, they are still bitter about being denied the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca.) Chapterhouse: Dune then goes on to reveal that Judaism is still alive and kicking after 25,000 years, and introduces the reader to at least one group of Jews that's had to make only minor accommodations to their faith. This is in contrast to just about every other Dune religion, which are all mishmashes of other ones (Buddislam, Navachristianity, etc.) because Jews are just that cool.

He wrote a short story, "The R Strain", about the reaction of the Jewish community to the genetic engineering of ruminant pigs, which according to a straightforward interpretation of the rules could be kosher — but it's not necessarily that simple.

Turtledove also pulled the same "Eternal Judaism" trope as in the Dune example above, subtly — there's a short story about a time traveler from the far future whose home time's way of life is so fundamentally different from ours that he finds everything incomprehensible — yet upon spotting a menorah in his host's home, casually remarks, "if I saw that in my own time, I'd think you were Jewish".

The inhabitants of the Colony, the national-level Worthy Opponent in The General series, are Muslims. They dealt with the Mecca problem by bringing a fragment of the Kaaba with them (Mecca itself was apparently destroyed in a war just before they left) and substituting their original landing site for prayer and pilgrimage purposes. Of course the whole point of this is just to keep the 'Fifth Century Byzantium IN SPACE!!!' setting as much as possible, so it's brushed over pretty quickly.

"I presume you had a haunch of beef to break your fast," I said. "Are you sure it is not Friday? ... When is it Sunday?" I cried. "Will you tell me the date of Advent? How shall we observe Lent and Easter, with two moons morris-dancing about to confuse the issue?"

This being a cheerful(ly whacked) work, they quote Jesus's words that the Sabbath was made for men and not the other way around, cheer up, and decide that they'll work it out.

The Star Trek Expanded Universe collection Star TrekCorps of Engineers: Creative Couplings by David Mack has a story that involves a Jewish-Klingon wedding. The author apparently found a rabbi who was also a Star Trek aficionado and asked him how it would probably go down from a ceremonial standpoint, as well as what Klingon foods would be kosher.

In Perelandra, it's revealed that Christ's life had profound cosmic consequences: after God became human it meant that all new sentient species from that point on would be human (though possibly of the Green-Skinned Space Babe variety.) Interestingly, however, Perelandra still has to go through its own version of the temptation of Eve, which forms the plot for the novel.

The previous book, Out of the Silent Planet, has Martians which believe in the Trinity but have not yet learned of the incarnation of Christ (in the series, Earth is under a sort of spiritual quarantine that has prevented news from reaching the other planets). They are also un-Fallen (at least mostly: they do die, though they have no fear of death) and so did not have nor need an Incarnation of their own.

Lewis also wrote an essay entitled "Religion and Rocketry", which identified a number of theological complications that could arise if man were to discover extraterrestrials, such as whether or not God's plan for human redemption would apply to them, or whether they would even need redemption in the first place. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that it's an interesting subject, but we shouldn't dwell on it too much until we actually find aliens.

In James Blish's classic A Case of Conscience, the Jesuit protagonist concludes that a race of reptilians leading apparently Edenic lives are of Satanic origin, since they have no concept of God and thus "prove" by their existence that He is unnecessary.

In the prequel book to Jack Chalker's Soul Rider series, as the colonists are settling in on their new planet, the narrator remarks that the Muslim communities had long debates over which way Mecca was, given that, due to the method of travel they used to get there, they didn't even know which way Earth was. They decided that upward was the best bet. The narrator commented that this put them in agreement with the Christians in the group, and wondered if someday all their children would wind up praying to the gas giant planet that the planet was orbiting. Which is exactly what happened when the computers running the world ran a conversion program on the entire society to prevent a civil war and decimation of the populace and merged all religions into a single one as part of that change.

The book Warp Angel by Stuart Hopen features a mercenary who, much to her surprise, falls in love with a rabbi/prominent religious leader who later gets kidnapped and shipped to a hellhole planet. The marriage was already kind of weird for her before that, and later Adam tries to figure out how one keeps kosher on the planet (by eating weeds).

In F. Paul Wilson's story (later blown up into a novel) "Midnight Mass", it turns out crosses — and only crosses — have power over vampires. The Jewish communities (and presumably other non-Christians, though we only know of this through a Jewish character) are completely overrun.

In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell the existence of angels, demons and fairies (not to mention heaven, hell and faerie) are all apparently well-established historical facts, although only fairies are shown to definitely exist. The book's footnotes allude to religion's reaction to this alternate history:

Fairies are often forcibly baptised into the church, despite their lack of understanding of Christianity. Indeed they seem to struggle with the idea that all humans are not Christians. Fairies particularly like and respect saints, who they regard as great magical beings who can be invoked for greater power.

In the Middle Ages there was a debate over whether fairies can achieve salvation through Christ. One group believed that for every human who failed to achieve salvation, a place was available for a fairy to redeem itself.

Magicians and priests were considered to be rivals of sorts, as both built their profession upon communing with other worlds and powers. This rivalry was largely peaceful, although the church viciously persecuted one heretic who suggested that if a fairy resurrected a human then the latter's soul and existence was now owed to the fairy rather than God.

"Transit" concerns a group of Muslims from an off-world colony traveling to Earth on hajj. The setting has regular interstellar travel, but places are strictly limited and considerably smaller than the waiting list; there's a lottery to allocate places, but it's implied that the results are not entirely impartial.

"From Whom All Blessings Flow" has several Alternate Histories arguing over which of them has the one true version of Christianity.

The sci-fi novel This Alien Shore has an Encyclopedia Exposita selection from an apparently updated Bible that compares space travel to the tower of Babel. It states that man turned the skies "black with their arrogance", and that the mutation-triggering Hausman Drive was God's punishment, dividing humans by species as he did by language. There's also a glimpse of what are probably, but not explicitly, Muslims making their pilgrimage. One of the characters mentions that most sects of the unnamed religion allow pilgrimages to sites a bit closer to home, but the hard-line sect they're watching insists that they have to visit the original site on Earth, even if they have to sell themselves into slavery to get the money for the trip.

In the novel Snare, the Muslim religion was altered for people living on other planets so that "Face Mecca" means "Point To The Stars". The practitioners believe this to be because Mecca is an abstract place in Heaven. The guy who came up with the rule probably did it because figuring out what direction another planet is from a different solar system is hard to do without a degree in astronomy. There is also some discussion on how applicable some rules concerning traditional gender roles are to a race of female-dominated non-humans who express an interest in studying human religion.

One of the examples of the Polish trend is Rafał Dębski's Zoroaster, where humanity had spread to the stars. In the backstory, the Inquisition had to be recreated, because far from Earth and Vatican, there were literally thousands of people declaring themselves the Christ come again and someone had to go around and either debunk or confirm them. No confirmation ever happened and by the time of the story, the trend is long past.

In Poul Anderson's "Elementary Mistake", a space probe captain feels like praying, "but Mecca was probably in a ridiculous direction."

In Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels, the very existence of Deryni complicates religious questions.

Deryni celebrants of the Sacraments can sense the psychic energies and emotions of participants (especially during key points of the Eucharist and the bestowing of Holy Orders). Does that make them higher than other humans on the Great Chain of Being? Were the Deryni persecutions a matter of jealousy as well as fear? (Supported by Word of God.)

Some few Deryni can heal just as Christ is depicted doing in the New Testament. How does that undercut the rationale (such as it is) for persecuting Deryni? Was Christ Deryni?

Was Camber really a saint? Perhaps a guardian angel? Did he choose to become a saint or an angel in the afterlife? Did his powers and his arcane knowledge permit him to choose that destiny for himself?

Several stories in the anthology Wandering Stars touch on the question: does a Jew have to be human? Most notably, William Tenn's "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi".

Touched upon in the short story "Changes" by Neil Gaiman (from the Smoke and Mirrors anthology) in which a drug intended for cancer treatment has an unexpected side effect... nigh-instantaneous and completely reversible gender realignment. It's briefly mentioned that the major religions of the world are noted as being about evenly split on whether such a drug is acceptable for treating cancer, though their position on its use as a cure for Gender Identity Disorder goes unrecorded. Then people start using it recreationally...

In John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata, the wiping out of 5/6 of humanity leads the Roman Catholic Church not only to allow priests and nuns to marry but to allow polygamy.

The Sparrow has Jesuit priests making First Contact on a planet near Alpha Centauri. Although many of their practices are tolerated (in some cases enthusiastically appreciated), the gentle Runa natives get very upset when anybody sings or eats meat; all Masses have to be spoken only, without hymns, and when somebody opens a can of spam the room they're in is evacuated and sealed off. At the very end of the story, you find out why.

Inverted by a heretical Kzinti sect from Larry Niven's Known Space books: traumatized by how their Proud Warrior Race keeps getting its ass kicked by Puny Humans, they've concluded that God is human and on our side. They dress like humans (complete with masks of human skin) in the hope that our terrifying patron deity won't notice them.

In the Discworld novels, there are several off-hand remarks about vampires working at kosher slaughterhouses. Which is strange because there isn't an actual Judaism in that world. Presumably, there is a religion that has a similar edict about the consumption of blood.

In the Leviathan series, it is implied that the Catholic Church has an issue with the genetically engineered beasties that are used by the allied powers.

In the backstory of the Star Carrier series Islamic terrorists nuked several major cities around the world, setting off World War III. In its wake every faith was required to ratify a pledge called the White Covenant that outlawed many religious practices: all adherents of all faiths could believe as they wished so long as that belief did not harm others. Proselytizing, most missionary work, and conversion by threat or force were now violations of basic human rights. Naturally this didn't go over well with some, such as the Muslim colonists on Mufrid whom the America battle group is trying to rescue at least some of in Earth Strike, choosing to GTFO rather than ratify.

Some good examples of the aforementioned Polish trend (which is generally based on Christianity) can be found in the works of writer Jacek Dukaj. Highlights include aliens spreading the Gospel on their own and leaving human Christians to wonder if they're just the space-age Jew-equivalent in God's plan, the Gospel spreading to the AI, alternate universes where the Christ never died, and so on.

At the end of Dani and Eytan Kollin's Incorporated World series a rabbi has to deal with the problem of an avatar (an Artificial Intelligence) wanting to convert. It only gets more complicated when humans and avatars start wanting to get married.

The Venus Prime series has Khalid Sayeed, a devout Shiite Muslim who happens to live on Mars. To compensate for the fact that Mecca is on an entirely different planet, he uses a special astrolabe to discern Mecca's location relative to Mars so that he can pray in approximately the right direction.

Given the subjects of Arthurian legends, where Saints, Paladins and some Biblical figures (namely Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea) rub elbows with The Fair Folk, wizards, and, in some cases, even pagan deities (e.g. Affalach and his daughter the goddess Modron), works of Arthurian literature tend to play with this. Two of the most notable works that touch on this are Merlin by Robert de Boron and Vita di Merlino. In the first detailing Merlin's birth, notes that he was born of a human woman raped by a demon (who may or may not be Satan himself), who intended the child to become the Antichrist. However, the woman had the child exorcised and baptized by a priest to undo the demonic influence on Merlin. He kept his magical abilities, thus making him unique as a son of Satan who uses his powers to help people (Does this soundfamiliar?). Vita di Merlino includes a story in which the wizard is brought before the Pope to be tried for heresy in which Merlin is exonerated. The latter is particularly unique given the debates as to whether to allow for "Natural Magic" (what is today called Science) as an exception in the prohibition of witchcraft that occurred during the medieval era.

In The Lost Regiment series, the people of Rus on planet Valennia are descendants of Medieval Russians who were taken by a Tunnel of Light and settled a number of cities on their new world. While they retain many tenets of Orthodox Christianity, such as making the sign of the cross (in the opposite fashion of the Catholics), over 1000 years, the name Jesus has morphed into Kesus. Additionally, they never say "God" or "Lord", and Kesus's father is stated to be Pern, a mangling of Perun, the chief deity of the Old Slavic Pantheon (pre-conversion to Christianity). So any phrase you'd expect to hear "God" in, they may substitute "Pern" for that.

In A Wolf In The Soul, Holmes makes several attempts to explain Greg's lycanthropy in the context of Jewish mysticism. Dr. Rumu, with her Indian mysticism, oddly seems to have a more thorough grasp of exactly what is going on, but despite this she is less able to provide a cure.

In Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha a Space Diaspora that taken place so long ago that the existence of Earth has apparently been forgotten has wrought huge changes on Islam, the dominant religion of the planet it takes place on. There is of course no Mecca or apparently even any memory of it. The least changed faction has added a sixth prayer time but the really changed culture is that of the nation of Nasheen which is an Islamic matriarchy.

"Rome, Sweet Rome" is a science fiction story based on a Popular Mechanics article questioning whether or not a US Marine Expeditionary Unit could single-handedly conquer the Roman Empire. Besides the usual Time Travel Tropes, it also explores the implications of sending Christians back to before the birth of Christ.

Rogue Emperor by Crawford Kilian features a modern-day sect of religious fundamentalists who take over an alternate Rome at around 100 AD. Being both anti-semitic and not particularly historically literate, they persecute the Jews and also go looking for early Roman Christians — a highly counterproductive course of action, as the Christians still identify as Jews. While pretending to work for them, the protagonist takes on the assignment of finding the Christians, and tracks down Mark (the gospel writer), who refuses to believe that the cultists would honor him, as they murdered his grandchildren.

In Winston P. Sanders' novella The Word To Space, the SETI Project finally made contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. Initially they were ecstatic - but then they discovered the extraterrestrials were the equivalent of the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, who saw making contact as a way to spread the Word and send Earth the equivalent of The Watchtower or Chick Tracts. the story dealt with the consequences of this bizarre dogmatic extraterrestrial religion making converts on Earth and the way they ignored all polite Earth requests that we'd quite like to get to know about you, your planet, its people, its science, et c, if you could throttle back on the word of God a bit, please. A Jesuit priest is brought in to consult, and sets off a chain of events which results in Holy War at their end and the collapse of their theocracy. note Enabling the scientists to finally talk about the really interesting stuff .

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Everything from Greek mythology exists and has been transplanted into the Western world, but it's not made entirely clear how this squares up with modern religions like Christianity.

Chiron gives something of a throwaway line suggesting that the Christian God may exist beyond the Olympians.

Later, a corrupt preacher in the Underworld is implied to be unable to see the place as it really is.

The Sequel Series features character who practice voodoo and Native American spirituality and goes into some depth on how they reconcile this with Greek myths. Another series in the same universe introduces a Muslim valkyrie, which is even more puzzling.

In Red Planet Blues by Robert J. Sawyer, the invention of Brain Uploading caused most people to give up a belief in the soul, since now they can attain functional immortality by technological means, though a few still believe in it, rejecting the idea since they feel their souls will be lost in the process.

Honor Harrington: Flag in Exile mentions that the Manticoran military doesn't have a Chaplains' Corps because of the sheer diversity of belief systems. Manticoran warships do have nondenominational chapels aboard but any services are done by lay leaders. This is contrasted with the Grayson Space Navy: the Graysons are mostly members of a Christian offshoot sect called the Church of Humanity Unchained (akin to fundamentalist Mormons with bits of conservative Islam for flavor) and their ships do carry chaplains. When women were allowed to enlist in the GSN due to manpower needs after Grayson allied with Manticore, they were only allowed to serve on the biggest ships because only superdreadnoughts had room for separate men's and women's quarters.

Jill Kismet: Jill is Catholic, but as a hunter she is barred from Confession and Communion for trafficking with the supernatural and the sin of murder repeated every night. By special dispensation she can still be buried in consecrated ground, however (assuming there's enough of her left to bury). Church tradition also holds that hunters cannot go to heaven for the same reason, but given that her deceased mentor Mikhail appears as an angel warrior at the climax of Angel Town, the dogma can be assumed to be wrong.

The Dresden Files: Various supernatural characters refer to the Abrahamic God as "the White God", and the series derives some amusing moments from the backgrounds of the Knights of the Cross, a trio of paladins in all but name who wield swords forged with nails from the Crucifixion laid into the hilt. Michael Carpenter is Catholic, but Sanya is agnostic and Waldo Butters is Jewish. (This is largely explained by the Knights being more a matter of good intent than of a specific faith.) See also comments from a local Catholic priest about Harry, whose faith is in magic itself rather than any deity, needing holy water by the gallon for some incidents.

Live Action TV

In general, the Buffyverse has an odd relationship with Christianity. Crosses, holy water, and exorcism are all effective against vampires or demons, but most of what's portrayed about its actual cosmology isn't particularly Christian. One explanation is that it's not that Christian holy symbols work because of their connection to Christianity, but rather early Christians decided that symbols that messed up vampires were holy. On the other hand, there is a heaven where the dead go to and many worlds that are labeled as hells.

Willow: I'm gonna have a hard time explaining this to my dad. Buffy: You really think it'll bother him? Willow: Ira Rosenberg's only daughter nailing crucifixes to her bedroom wall? I have to go over to Xander's house just to watch 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' every year.

Toyed with in the second episode of the series, where Giles is explaining the origins of vampires and demons, and notes that 'contrary to popular mythology' the world did not begin as a paradise.

Annie: Ah well, you shouldn't be eating bacon anyway, should you — you're Jewish. George: Yeah, I gave up on the whole orthodoxy thing when I started turning into a wolf. Annie: Do they have rules about being a werewolf as well? George: I think you'd be hard pressed to find a religion that doesn't frown on it.

Likewise, his Star of David is show to work against all vampires except for Mitchell, since George implicitly trusts him.

A mild version occurs early in Charmed when Piper worries that being a witch might make her automatically evil in the eyes of the Church (and her former priest.) Note that she's not at all religious, so it's a bit strange that this is a concern. After angsting the entire episode, she finally walks into the church and ecstatically proclaims herself "good" when she doesn't burst into flame.

Ivanova's childhood rabbi visits the station, triggering a brief discussion of the difficulty of determining the kosher status of non-Earth food. The Rabbi's conclusion is that anything not mentioned in the Torah was probably OK, but he isn't certain. Or maybe he just wasn't too strict in his beliefs and wanted to try the food. The creator discussions mention that they would have loved to do more on it but didn't really have time. Ivanova, the only Jewish regular on the show, solves it by not bothering to keep kosher, though she probably wouldn't have on Earth, either.

A couple episodes feature a monastic order moving onto the station whose primary mission is to learn about the nature of God, which they accomplish in part by interviewing aliens such as Delenn about their native religious beliefs.

In an offhand mention in one episode, The Pope is described as a "she." It's a fantastic idea at least grammatically: the official title of the position is "Supreme Pontiff." The word "pope" is more like an official nickname, a derivation of papa: father—a very masculine description.

In The Lost Tales, a Catholic priest monologues for a bit about the Catholic Church having to face a massive decline after humanity reached the stars. Naturally, he finds himself having to deal with a possible Demonic Possession.

The Catholic Church later helps to rebuild human civilization by saving knowledge in monasteries After the End, just as in Real Life following the fall of the Roman Empire.

Dominion: When angels appeared, blamed humanity for God's disappearance, and proceeded to destroy most of the planet, most organized religions understandably collapsed. In the aftermath, however, the Church of the Savior (based on belief in The Chosen One foretold to one day save and restore humanity) slid into the slots leftover and has done very well for itself, being the unofficial official religion of Vega. Inversely, there's the Black Acolytes, who still worship Gabriel as a god, and believe that the suffering he's delivered to mankind will make them great. Oh, and the matriarchal society of Helena is said to worship something called the "divine femininity" which appears to have been referring to Uriel.

Tabletop Games

The Vampire: The Requiem book on the Lancea Sanctum (a generally Abrahamic Covenant that believes the centurion Longinus was turned into a vampire when the blood of Christ dripped onto his lips, and was taught that vampires are commanded by God to harrow sinners) goes into detail about how the various creeds mesh together on the vampiric condition and the mortal faith of their practitioners (for instance, how a Muslim vampire effectively fasts during Ramadan when he's in a coma from sunup to sundown).

BattleTech, though usually cursory in its detailing of religion, mentions theological disputes that delayed Islamic expansion into space, with the result that Islam is a minority faith in most every state in the Inner Sphere. Among other things, they decided that 'towards Mecca' can be approximated as 'towards the planet Earth', and really relaxed the hajj. The hajj was further complicated by Mecca being destroyed by a nuclear warhead during the fall of the Star League. An Entry with a Bang used this for possibly the only Crowning Moment of Heartwarming involving Islamic warriors ever to appear in a Tom Clancy fanfiction. Another little detail of religion: Catholicism has split at least once more. The New Avalon branch of the church has its own Pope and all, although it's on generally good terms with the Earth-based one. This came about back when the Star League fell and the Pope decided to transfer control of the individual branches of the church to his immediate subordinates in each Successor State — but the transmission to New Avalon (in the Federated Suns) was garbled and the cardinal assumed he had been put in charge of the whole thing instead. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up (there was a war going on, after all), both sides had grown just far enough apart to make a simple reunion impractical, and so the division has stood.

Traveller is often cursory as well but it has some fairly well developed religions. In any case religion is usually just another facet of local custom.

Eclipse Phase briefly mentions how the three Abrahamic religions coped (or, more accurately, largely failed to cope) with the functional immortality granted by Brain Uploading and Body Surfing, and how faiths with reincarnation as a tenet (such as Hinduism and Buddhism) increased in popularity as the technology became widely available.

Vampires in Munchkin Bites can wear "The Yarmulke of Religious Obfuscation", which grants bonuses when fighting Meddling Clerics or Vampire Hunters.

Transhuman Space gives a brief rundown on how various religions deal with "ghosts" and AIs. Broadly speaking, they tend to be "humanocentric" but not "bio-chauvinist" (that is, they don't see AIs as people, but accept brain uploads as being the same person, more or less), although there are lots of exceptions, and several fringe sects such as Christian Hyperevolutionism.

In a Castle Falkenstein article in Pyramid magazine, "Concerning the Djinn", Phil Masters briefly looks at what it means to be a powerful spirit being and a devout Muslim, and the same ideas were later re-used in the same author's GURPS Castle Falkenstein: The Ottoman Empire. Essentially, the djinn have their own mosques, hidden underground, because attending a human mosque is liable to be disruptive to proceedings (they generally turn invisible when making the hajj). Though funnily enough, these ideas all come more or less directly from genuine Muslim folklore.

Cerberus News had a news report that Jews in the future are celebrating Passover, and there is some religious argument about whether aliens can be present at the meal. Most agree that yes, they can, and there's even a small business in supplying unleavened bread specifically made for turians and quarians.

A certain Armor-Piercing Question in the backstory that spurs a centuries-long war that drove an entire species from their planet: "Does this unit have a soul?"

The Codex indicates that many aliens have responded to the plethora of alien religions by converting (for example, Confucianism and Zen Buddhism have found a niche among the turians). For various reasons, certain religions are popular with races that discovered them only after going to the stars. Meanwhile, it is implied that theistic belief in general has declined amongst humanity (Ash implies that she has been harassed in the past for believing in God, for example).

Rivet City in Fallout 3 has a Catholic church dedicated to St. Monica, a ghoul who is apparently the patron saint of the Wasteland.

There's one arc of Get Medieval that culminates in a group of characters, including medieval Christian Sir Gerard, spending some time on the moon, and Gerard at one point thinks, "No wonder it's taking Jesus 1400 years to return. He's got quite a tour to make." Similarly, when the other characters reveal their Human Alien origins, he doesn't question why they look just like humans because "God made mankind in his own image. Why would he make other planets differently?" And in the same arc, one of the Human Aliens who's converted to Islam stops for a moment to pray while they're on the moon and faces towards Earth, since that's where Mecca is.

In 1/0, the grass golem Zadok is interested in exploring his pseudo-Jew roots, but he lives in a minimalistic webcomic with No Fourth Wall, no rabbis, nothing to circumcise, and thus no way to complete the formal conversion — he is incapable of (Orthodox) Judaism.

Calamities of Naturenotes that being gay and Catholic is easier than being a vampire and a Jehovah's Witness.

Web Original

Malachi in Enter The Farside talks about this in Interlude 2. He says that the existence of the Farside was enough to make most major religions have a big enough crisis of faith that a war started to happen.

Scary News out of Tokyo-3: It turns out Second Impact had a pretty drastic effect on a number of real-world religions (and cults). Some have died out completely; others, like (for example) Scientology, no longer exist in their original form.

Western Animation

Futurama, Dr. Zoidberg carries many stereotypical Jewish mannerisms, despite being a shellfish and thus non-kosher (though humans are not kosher either). This ironically leads him to being refused entrance to a "Bot-Mitzvah", run by Jewish Robots. Word of God says that his entire race converted to something akin to 20th century East Coast America middle class moderate/reform Judaism because it suited them... and because it's funny.

Real Life / Other

This blog post considers the kosher status of various imaginary creatures.

Would the consequences of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ still apply to extraterrestrials whose species did not originate from Earth and did not descend from Adam? According to both the LDS church and the Jesuits, yes. This spoof article uses the opposite assumption in an attempt to "scripturally prove" the existence of extraterrestrial life. Apparently the reason why the Second Coming hasn't happened yet is that Jesus is busy dying and being resurrected on all the other planets in the universe.

The Catholic Church has debated the idea of extraterrestrial life, and one conclusion they have reached is that not all alien races might be Fallen as humanity is — which also implies they wouldn't have had a Messiah either as they wouldn't have needed saving in the first place (or possibly that they might have had a different Messiah, and thus live by different rules. Since these would still be from God they would be no less valid than ours. This is bound to get interesting should contact ever happen.)

An official statement of the Vatican can basically be boiled down to, "There is no current proof of whether or not alien life exists, but the Bible does not strictly speak against it, so it's still possible. Should we encounter alien life in the future and they wish to join the Church, we will gladly offer them baptism." Cue outrage and hate from various other denominations and "more orthodox" Catholic parishes.

According to The Koran and other Islamic sources, djinni (invisible spirits made of fire and the inspiration for genies in Western literature) follow the same religions that humans do — there are Muslim genies, Christian genies, Jewish genies, etc. — and will be judged at the end of time in the same manner that humans will.

There has been some debate about whether or not eating mermaids is acceptable under Islam. Given that nearly all mythological portrayals of mermaids portray them as sapient (not to mention quite vengeful), the answer is very likely to be a resounding no.

One rather bizarre Taliban propaganda video done by one of Osama Bin Laden's underlings apparently encouraged Muslims to invade space and convert aliens. The reaction of just about every news agency to it was 'What?'

The question is Older Than They Think. One Medieval Theologian on being asked about how The Fair Folk fitted in, replied simply that it was probably better to wait until they knew they existed. C. S. Lewis noticed this in his book The Discarded Image (an overview of Medieval beliefs for use in understanding Medieval literature). The book devotes a whole chapter to The Fair Folk. J. R. R. Tolkien, on the other hand, in part wrote his mythology specifically to fit elves into the picture. In one essay he commented "God is the Lord of Angels, of Men — and yes, of Elves". One interpretation is that Tolkien's Elves are meant to represent an Unfallen humanity; this is what Mankind would be if they had never been cast out of Eden — Eden in this case being the Undying Lands, which the Elves can leave by choice but can always return to.

Between the World Wars, in US East Coast Jewish culture, there was a common custom of going to the Catskills during the summers to watch Jewish vaudeville shows in the resorts there. One of the most popular and most common jokes would take place in the context of a skit in which a leering vampire pursues a woman all around the set, until, cornered, she hides her face and holds out a cross. "Dracula" would smirk at the audience, and hold his knowing pause until the audience was hysterical with laughter, then say, sometimes in Yiddish, "Oy, have YOU got the wrong vampire!" That joke also got used in The Fearless Vampire Killers.

The Chacham Tzvi once wrote a responsa on whether or not a Golem, which resembles a human but does not have a human soul, could be counted in a minyan (a gathering of ten Jews for prayer). This may actually become a relevant issue if we ever manage to make Ridiculously Human Robots... The plain answer is "no".

The Talmud makes mention of people who would create an animalGolem and eat it, presumably without the need for ritual slaughter. One hopes that unlike the more famous one, this one wasn't made of clay.

The Vatican's recent revelation that the pope is not allowed to be an organ donor, lest someone inadvertently find themselves with an organ that's a holy relic, has led to a bunch of speculation in the science fiction community about what exactly having holy organs would mean. This blog post by Charles Stross is representative.

Bacon grown from stem cells. This kind of food is technically halal, as there are pork substitutes commonly consumed by vegetarians which is certified halal by local religious authorities, but it can be argued that it is haram on the grounds that it will encourage Muslims to eat actual pork after that. Whether it is Kosher is another story, though.

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